I've put together a series of Shape frames into a single Combined Polygon. I noticed that in putting shape boxes together that there was a color protocol that seemed to declare that the entire finished polygon would acquire one color or the other for the entire polygon. In my case the "fill" colors were all "None".

I want to added colors to parts; sort of like a colored drawing by Calder or when in school you drew a bunch of overlapping shapes and scribbles with a black crayon and then filled in the voids with colored crayons. But no path presented itself to do this in Scribus that I could find.

So, can I somehow isolate parts of a polygon and apply an individual color to each part. If it can't be reasonably done in Scribus, does anyone know if, say, Inkscape or any vector editor can allow me to do this and re-import it back in as a .svg?

I did find some controls that seem to refer only to the last two Shape frames combined. Each Shape inside either of those frames had some individual coloring options in the properties palette: Color fill and transparency (there is a stroke option too), but they seemed limited and clunky. For example, the few color choices would actually change radically blue to purple for instance. Again this was selectable only in the last two frames, earlier combinations were immutable.

What I had in mind as an example, Calder drew a harlequin geometric horse in a series of diamonds or triangles in dark strokes. He then filled in each triangle and diamond individually in various primary colors like a mosaic. In Scribus at the moment, in a practical sense, the horse could have only one color or two depending on if it was either a single polygon or a combined polygon. Otherwise the harlequin horse would require an application like Inkscape to build practically. Except I did wind up with three colors, one out-of-the-blue so to speak.

Given my own conclusion, I decided to take a different approach and ended up with a perfectly satisfactory solution where a large text initial, V, was superimposed over an Egyptian cartouche via Item > Path Operations. The cartouche itself I was able to color a pale gold and the V in pale Cyan, which turned out to be an acceptable lavender. All was good until I decided to edit the squared edges of the V. I first used Item > Split Polygons to uncouple the cartouche in order to edit the letter shape using nodes. I had not edited either shape's fill colors, but upon selecting Split Polygons I was instantly presented with a third fill color where none had been before. That was the area inside the ring of the cartouche; a deeper, richer yellow than the pale gold. I selected each of my split shapes (polygons) and changed each each of their fill colors to "None". This did nothing for the new third deep yellow, which remains immutable inside the cartouche.

Leaving that alone for the moment (it wasn't bad), I began editing the nodes and frame position of the letter. That is when I noted that the edits left the original pre-edit V in place and I noted the that the new yellow "shines through" the edited version of the letter. Please see the zip file attached.

I haven't been able to find a method or mention of a what to do to eliminate the original letter's ghost, it seems like it must be a common occurrence, perhaps unique to OS X.

I've been reluctant to just re-Combine Polygons with this ghost letter in place for fear of really messing things up, however I note that under Path Operations (addition) that the little icon for the V is the sharper edited version, so perhaps in re-Combining, the old ghost letter disappears.

I'm going to re-Combine (addition) the two shapes and re-introduce the fill colors for the cartouche and letter before I send this post and report as to what happens.

Very interesting. Upon completion of the above, the pre-edit ghost letter didn't disappear and I wound up with four colors: two shades of yellow and two shades of turquoise(?)--see enclosed screen shot. I fussed with the turquoise to make it more like the original Cyan (lavender). Odd but beautiful, and actually reducible to about postage stamp size before the top of the V becomes muddled. I re-saved it as a second zip file enclosed.

I wanted to test how the deep yellow fill would appear in grayscale by converting a copy to an Image frame (I was never able to open Image Effects to see), but got an entirely new animal. The cartouche and it's interior melded into a single shape, lost all the interior lines, and the V became solid losing it's ghost except for a portion now absorbed into the amorphous yellow conglomerate. See last screen shot.

Can you make any sense of this? I have a feeling that something went wacky went I Split Polygons and edited the V shape. I'm guessing that somewhere in there you are going to tell me to construct a do-over. If so, is there a method to fill and keep control of the deep yellow center of the cartouche? I'm beginning to like it.

your work contains different elements in yellow and one element in blue. but as some of them are semi transparent (opacity of 77% – and you've played with the blend modes…), there are optically different colors where the elements overlap.

With the information you presented, I've re-visited the Logo and experimented with the various blend modes and arrived at the blend modes that seem acceptable to me. I was using Transparency settings to control the color, instead of shade as I was probably supposed to use all along.

The anomalies, as they appeared originally began when I made the decision to edit the letter corners from squared off to sharper points. The original letter started as a Text frame that I converted to a polygon frame and was Combined last in the process with the cartouche shape. The cartouche was in itself an earlier set of four combined polygons using The Path Operations:

The first was combining the two separately created capsules or pills into a single ring shape (I couldn't do this well using Transform, the circles transformed but skewed the sides). The ring at this point stood as it's own shape with the lighter gold color no internal fill (the strong yellow).

The second was combining the "knot" or "rope braid" polygon (created using Duplicate) over the ring using Path Operators.

The third was combining the the ring/knot over the bar using Path Operations to create the finished cartouche, now a stand alone single polygon.

The fourth was combining the letter (converted to a polygon shape) over the cartouche using Path Operators.

All was happy at this point, but then I decided to edit the letter shape, which at that point was part of the entire combined polygon. In a tutorial on Editing Shapes it was advised not to use "Undo" combined polygons as the results are not predictable, thus I used Item > Split Polygons, but I wonder if a lot more went on behind the scenes. When I clicked Split command; bingo, the deep yellow fill appeared into the center of the light gold cartouche with no further action. I left that as is for the moment because the letter and the cartouche both had their own separate frames returned. I did note that the Split Polygons option was unavailable to earlier combinations beyond the last two.

Double clicking on the letter polygon to activate the Node dialog box, I was able the sharpen the bottom and the serif tops of the letter and move the letter up a little relative to the cartouche. That is when I noted that the (cyan) letter had left it's unedited ghost inside the letter frame but colored the same as the light gold cartouche, not the cyan, and remained largely un-amendable.

Since then I have noted a couple of things about the letter's ghost: The light gold indicates that it had de-coupled itself from the letter and attached itself as part of the cartouche, also that the ghost had subsumed itself into the cartouche as an indistinguishable shape--the letter overlaid (and overlays) the cartouche. Note just below where the letter crosses over the cartouche.

I have been able to edit portions of the ghost (see enclosed new zip file and by the way OS X 10.11.6). I can select the letter's shape frame and double click to enter the letter's and ghost's Node structure. However only the portion of the ghost that originally laid outside the cartouche. You will see that here the ghost's Nodes have been edited to conform to the outline of the letter; in other words the ghost has been tucked into the letter until both are the same. Voila, the ghost disappears. The portion of the letter's ghost that lies inside the cartouche remains unselectable and uneditable even though it is part of the letter's shape frame and the letter itself is editable. Also the potion of the ghost that is uneditable overlies the deep yellow.

Also I noted that the two Split Polygons are not the letter's polygon frame and the final cartouche's polygon frame, but the letter's frame and the cartouche's frame that has expanded to include the letter's separate frame as well.

For some reason hashing around with this, I thought I would see what happens on export to a PDF. I was immediately presented with PreFlight Verifier telling me that three (not two) polygons have transparencies, even though opacity is now set at 100%(?). There should have been only two split polygons at this point. I queried the third one and it gave me a--let me call it a ghost frame--that included only the first capsule created at the beginning of the cartouche and long ago subsumed via Combine Polygons into the finished cartouche in the first step (see above). Also this capsule is the one filled with the sudden and belated appearance of the deep yellow. As a clue, I note this one is called "Polygon 3", which might refer to that first Combined Polygon created. I don't think I used the Path Operators then, just the Combine command.

This third polygon can be selected only through selecting it from the Preflight Verifier and is uneditable, no Nodes can be attached to it and it cannot be recognized any other way. Otherwise it remains invisible. Also within this "Polygon 3" is the un-amendable portion of the letter's ghost. A ghost within a ghost.

I have blown the logo down to as low 5/8" (9.5 mm), including the unfinished text frame at the bottom, and printed it in greyscale. Baring the letter's ghost, the deep yellow is quite striking in greyscale and now I want to keep it. Happy accident. The only ill effect is still the letter's ghost, which at that size causes the serifs to blur, become fuzzy.

From all that I have given above in the way of history for this, can you see a path that will allow me to activate this interior portion of the letter's ghost and edit it out? If you can that would be appreciated. If not, I hope all this will be of help to others.

Also for a test, I clicked Ignore Errors (transparencies) in Preflight Verifier and exported the logo to PDF. It did not give me the option to export as, the required, PDF-x-1a. Do you see a reason why this PDF/X type was not an option? I do note that layers and transparencies can be issues, but now there are now no transparencies(?) and only one layer, yet the Preflight Verifier still registers the message.

One more question for the future. Finally I want to edit and convert the text frame to a polygon and Combine Polygons with the cartouche/letter polygon for a single logo polygon. This is a case where there is no physical connection between the two combined parts. Is this likely to be a known problem?

you still don't understand what you're doing!as long as you order the stack of your paths in a mannar that one element with a solid fill ('polygon759') lies on top of almost everything else, you need transparency related blend modes to see the other elements.

take a look at the stack order of your elements! (either in the 'outline' window or in 'properties' → 'x, y, z')

if you really like to work with vectors, use a real vector tool like 'inkscape'…

…The portion of the letter's ghost that lies inside the cartouche remains unselectable and uneditable even though it is part of the letter's shape frame and the letter itself is editable. Also the potion of the ghost that is uneditable overlies the deep yellow.

i could repeat my first sentence…what you call the 'ghost' is part of 'polygon3' …and in reality it underlies the outer form of your 'cartouche'. when you set the blend mode to 'normal', the whole 'polygon3' will be invisible (as long as you don't shift it up in the stack…) the darker yellow tone is a result of the blend mode set to multiply.btw. you can select this polygon with the mouse pointer. but to select an element wich lies below an other one, you need to press 'ctrl' ('cmd' on macOS) while you click through the stack.

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Also I noted that the two Split Polygons are not the letter's polygon frame and the final cartouche's polygon frame, but the letter's frame and the cartouche's frame that has expanded to include the letter's separate frame as well.

yes, as you didn't separate your polygons with 'undo', just the two closed paths have been separated. so the left part of the letter 'A' became part of the inner 'cartouche', while the right part belongs to the outer one…

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…three (not two) polygons have transparencies, even though opacity is now set at 100%(?).

set the blend mode to 'normal!

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…It did not give me the option to export as, the required, PDF-x-1a. Do you see a reason why this PDF/X type was not an option?

activate your color management and scribus will show .pdf/x-1a.

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…This is a case where there is no physical connection between the two combined parts. Is this likely to be a known problem?

this is not a problem!but at th moment your file is far away from a clean vector logo (and as i suggested earlier, you should better use inkscape for this…)